Telemedicine kept simple

Telemedicine ("medicine from a distance") is about bringing specialist knowledge to a patient from afar, by the use of communication technology. This article is based on personal experience in helping set up a simple, versatile, cheap and effective store-and-forward telemedicine system for the British Defence Medical Services. This system uses readily available still digital cameras to record clinical, radiographic and microscopic images, which are then sent by electronic mail to an organised network of specialists for secondary or tertiary opinion. The system is in use in various countries throughout the world, and has also proven to have civilian and humanitarian uses. The system is now being emulated in civilian practice in the United Kingdom, the United States, and in previously isolated hospitals in the Third World. I also describe the active role played by a telemedicine charity and by medical students on elective in the Third World in setting up telemedicine links using this system. Readers are invited to co-operate in the setting up of a global outreach telemedicine programme, linking elective students, isolated Third World hospitals, and University Teaching Hospitals.